Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of the debut novel Big Girl, a New York Times  Editors’ Choice  and named one of Time Magazine's Best Books of the Month. Big Girl was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as  “achingly beautiful," and in  a starred review, Publishers Weekly raved “Sullivan charms in her stunning debut novel about a Black girl’s coming-of-age... This is a treasure.” Big Girl has won the highest praise from bestselling authors, including Kiese Laymon, who hails it as “a new American classic.” For Janet Mock, it is “a tender and sumptuous offering of beauty.”  And from Jacqueline Woodson, “Sullivan has given us a gift as big, beautiful and complicated as living itself.”

Sullivan’s award-winning short story collection, Blue Talk and Love, won the Lambda Literary Judith A. Markowitz Award for emerging LGBTQ writers. Among Sullivan’s many other honors and awards are the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. Sullivan is a Professor of English at Georgetown University.